The following guide, originally created by TechSoup Global, has been significantly updated and expanded by J.D. Lasica and Kim Bale of Socialbrite.

More and more nonprofits, businesses and entrepreneurs are turning to Web conferencing services to communicate with fellow staff members, customers, supporters and prospects.

A Web conference is a virtual meeting you conduct online, allowing you to share documents and applications from your computer with people in far-flung locations and to communicate with them via video, text or voice chat. Through Web conferencing, you can bring together employees to collaborate on a project, present webinars about your latest product or services, or train advocates or support staff.

While your organization likely uses email or conference calls for much of your long-distance communication, sometimes a full-blown virtual meeting is the only way to hammer out the details of an important initiative. Web conferencing lets anyone with an Internet connection and a Web browser meet and collaborate online in real time.

Some conferencing tools require participants to install a piece of software on their own computers before they can participate; other tools are entirely Web-based. All require an Internet connection. The tools differ in the features they provide for collaboration and communication. For instance, some let participants speak to one another through their computers’ microphones while others let everyone interact via video. Still others have an option to join the audio part of the conference by a separate audio/telephone bridge.

To help you choose a service that suits your nonprofit, we’ve pointed out features commonly found in Web conferencing products and explained other considerations you should be aware of. Our list leaves out tools like Skype and Apple’s iChat, which offer great video conferencing (video chat) and text chat for a limited number of people but don’t offer full-on Web conferencing services that offer a wide range of collaboration capabilities.

When considering all of these great features, it’s important to consider how these capabilities will affect your Local Area Network (LAN). For example, many of the products below include videoconferencing. One person using hosted videoconferencing at a location wouldn’t add to much to local network issues. Multiple workers videoconferencing at the same time could slow the rest of your network traffic.

Whenever possible, try out the product before purchasing. Use the information below and on product websites to narrow your choices, then try the two or three products that best fit your needs.

Here is our comparison of 14 top Web conferencing services. If you have your own favorites, or have any updates or corrections, please share them in the comments!

Watchitoo: Multimedia collaboration

1We used Watchitoo during Personal Democracy Forum and the midterm elections and were impressed with its rich collaboration feature set. Watchitoo is a real-time collaboration platform where multimedia presentations meld with video conferencing to create a powerful stage for online communication. Its technology lets you easily host and participate in cutting-edge presentations that support multiple video feeds, screen sharing, white-boarding, API implementation, embedding capabilities and recording functionalities that enhance employee communication and collaboration.

Pricing: Free up to 5 people; up to 25 people for $39/month plan; up to 50 people for $49/month plan with a larger storage capacity.

Pay per use: Yes for live events

Trial: 30-day free trial

Bottom line: A cutting-edge service for collaborating around rich-media projects. Includes some capabilities not found elsewhere. One hiccup: a slight time lag in VoIP conversations.

Infinite Conferencing: Nonprofits are top of mind

2Infinite Conferencing, an Onstream Media company, specializes in phone and Web conferencing solutions, webinars and webcasting. It delivers feature-rich solutions that range from on-demand conferencing to full-scale, online event management. Invitees need only an Internet-connected computer and phone line to participate in a Web conference. Infinite has a nonprofit program that offers discounted rates to charities, religious organizations, foundations, educational institutions and membership and scientific associations. Clients include the American Hospital Association, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Dell, Sony, Disney — more than 5,000 customers in all.

Recording: Yes. You can record the session via an on-demand recording feature at $1.99 per minute, or a member of the Infinite team can capture the recording for you for $200.

Polling & survey: Yes. The polling feature is available throughout a Web session. Infinite can create a customized survey that pops up following your webinar and can also be sent out via a url for $100.

Post-meeting reports: Yes. Following the session, you’ll receive an email that lists each participant’s name, company, email address and duration of connection. In addition, the report will feature all of your polling results if the feature is used.

Pricing: Two pricing options. You’re billed on usage (how many people attend and how long they’re connected) or you can select an unlimited usage package. No term requirements or monthly minimums. Basic prices: Reservationless audio conferencing, 3.5 cents per minute per line. Operator-assisted audio conferencing, 18 cents per minute per line. Web conferencing: 6 cents per minute per connection — compare with WebEx at 33 cents per minute — or consider the flat-rate option. It supports up to 1,000 participants with no advance reservation required. Continue reading →

Watchitoo, DoGood, ClassWish, Zynga, business ethics & more

We’ve been deluged recently with updates and rollouts of interesting new sites, tools and services. There’s no way to fully do them justice, but they deserve attention, so here’s a roundup of eight worthy projects and websites that have crossed our desk:

Watchitoo: Collaborate with rich media

1At Socialbrite we have a pretty good directory of cutting-edge Web 2.0 productivity tools, so we were intrigued when a longtime friend, Brian August (who provided legal advice to Ourmedia.org), told us of a new Web conferencing service called Watchitoo. It’s a live, two-way, HD multi-streaming video platform that lets participants collaborate and share any form of rich media (video, photos, documents) in real time. Fully web-based and embeddable, Watchitoo offers any organization the ability to communicate and collaborate remotely. It also has full integration with Twitter and Facebook

Says Brian: “Watchitoo represents a portable, modular, simple way to instantly collaborate while sharing media. A candidate could use this technology to have a web-based town hall watched by hundreds (or thousands) while taking questions from constituents who will appear live on screen with the candidate. A reporter could use this to review footage/photographs with others in the field. The implications of this type of remote intimacy are profound.” I’m looking forward to seeing Watchitoo in action on June 3 at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York.

DoGood: See good. Do better.

2With DoGood, a free browser plug-in for Firefox, IE or Safari, you can turn your everyday web browsing into donations that support green initiatives and movements for positive social change, at no cost to you with no privacy or security issues. Today, for instance, DoGood “served” 172,673 good ideas. The DoGooder hides generic advertising on the Internet, and shows thoughtful green initiatives, philanthropic calls for action and health and wellness ideas instead. The site then donates 50 percent of its profits from ad sales back to good causes, effectively turning web surfing into a funding mechanism.